Numerous medical procedures involve the use of processed tissue samples as grafts to fill in or otherwise promote growth and healing at a surgical site. For example, orthopedic surgery often employ the infusion of a mixture crushed or milled bone with blood or other biological and/or pharmaceutical components into a surgical site to promote healing and recovery after an injury and the procedure itself. The crushed or milled bone is typically obtained from a larger bone specimen of the patient and then processed using a bone grinder or cutter that reduces the larger specimen into crushed bone particles more suitable for use in the surgical procedure. Processing and incorporating a patient's own tissue alleviates the possibility of rejection or infection at the surgical site. The surgeon can thus utilize the processed bone particles and/or combinations thereof with other growth-promoting agents to repair bone defects or injuries.
Existing bone mills are typically large, expensive devices that are cumbersome to use and clean and often require re-sterilization at the end of each use. The need to re-sterilize can require expensive and time consuming gas sterilization or autoclave sterilization procedures, which can limit the overall availability of the mill for multiple procedures in any given time period. The unavailability of such devices increases the time which necessarily passes between procedures, thereby decreasing operating room and surgical efficiency. Further, the porous nature of blades commonly found in bone mills facilitates the retention of bone particles, which can hamper the effectiveness of the cleaning process, furthering the possibility of contamination during subsequent use of the bone mill.
In addition to reduced availability and the inconveniences and costs associate with sterilizing requirements, existing bone mills are typically powered devices that require an external means for driving the mill, such as a pressurized air source or an electrical motor. Such powered devices often operate at high RPMs, which generate significant amounts of heat that can compromise or otherwise destroy the healing properties of a tissue sample. Additionally, existing mills may only have the capability to produce a single size of crushed bone particles. As such, a surgical suite needs to have multiple devices to provide crushed bone at different sizes, which greatly increases the cost of having bone-milling capabilities. Otherwise, a surgeon is disadvantageously forced to use crushed bone having a size either too large or too small for a particular surgical procedure, resulting in potential difficulties and reduced efficacy.
In view of the above limitations, it is therefore desirable to have an inexpensive tissue processing device that can either be disposed after each use easily sterilized, can create processed tissue specimens having a desired range of sizes, and can also be manually operated with ease.